Canoes are manufactured in many configurations, each representing an optimization for some intended purpose or purposes in an expected operating environment. Some factors which influence canoe design are: cost, weight, load carrying capacity, directional and roll stability, maneuverability in fast water, freeboard, paddling ease, use with motor or sail power, and maintenance needs.
Other service requirements, and the need to have any given canoe serve more than its primary intended purpose, have spawned an accessory market. Generally, these accessories are either designed for universal application and perform poorly, such as strap-on wheeled carts which shift in use, or are designed for specific applications and work well, but cannot be shared among several different canoes. In addition, accessories designed for specific applications often require hull modification for proper attachment, such as reinforcement of mounting areas or drilling of holes. Examples of this would be sail rigs where the mast is stepped to the bottom inner surface of the hull and stabilizing floats or sponsons bolted to the hull above the water line.
Canoes in a group sortie or owned by a multi-canoe family, a canoe-rental business, or a camp will quite often be of several different designs. This makes it difficult or impossible to share the use of some desirable accessories and limits group use to a few general purpose accessory products. Thus, there is an evident need to develop a universal canoe accessory mounting bracket which can be easily and securely coupled to almost any popular canoe and which permits the quick interchange of a whole range of accessories that are optimized to take advantage of the common bracket, rather than compromised to fit various canoes.